FAQ

What is ICO-MAP?

ICO-MAP collects all the quality Active, Pre & Upcoming ICO’s, and thus we ensure that you won’t miss out on the chance to be apart of the next big thing. With ico-map.io you can put your Upcoming or Ongoing ICO on the MAP and ivestors easily can find and track ICOs.

What is an ICO?

An initial coin offering (ICO), also known as a digital token sale or crowdsale, is a way of raising funds from the public for the development of a product outside of the traditional VC world. Usually products are blockchain-based technologies, but the crowdsale model is increasingly being used for other kinds of projects as well.

Each project creates a new cryptocurrency in the form of tokens, which are then sold to the public to raise funds for project development.

If a product successfully completes their ICO funding goal, their tokens are distributed to those who bought them and they become tradeable on the cryptocurrency market. If the product itself is then successful, these tokens can potentially become very valuable (ex. this is what happened with ETH, the computing platform Ethereum’s coin, which was originally sold to the public as tokens during the project’s own ICO).

How to invest in ICOs?

Most of the ICOs are built on the Ethereum platform using the ERC20 protocol. There are also other platforms such as NEO, Qtum, Lisk, Komodo, Strat, ICX and many others that some ICOs use as their transaction network. ICO projects have their contribution dashboards that people looking to participate in the projects can utilize to submit and receive relevant information. Many times contributors need to sign up for the ICO whitelist to reserve their share of the generated token pool.

Know Your Customer (KYC) documentation is usually also required from the contributors. Each person submitting digital assets to the project need to confirm their identity to the project by sending over scans or photos of official Identification Documentation (ID). Whitelisted and KYC document submitted participants need to have a suitable transaction network wallet and tokens that the ICO accepts as contributions against the token generation. The contributor submits the compatible wallet address information to the ICO and sends a desired amount of accepted tokens into a designated wallet address provided by the official communication channel of the ICO.

After the ICO technical team has confirmed that the incoming contribution matches a verified KYC document related wallet address, the contributor wallet gets rewarded with the promised amount of the project tokens. Sometimes the process from the end of the ICO to the date when the tokens are transferred to the contributors might take several weeks due to the programming work required in between.

The different ICO stages

1. Seed funding round

In this stage the project is usually in its very early steps refining the idea, gathering the team and preparing the white paper, website and strategic approaches. The seed phase is usually not very public and the team aims to raise the initial funding from their own networks. This is a good opportunity to get the maximum bonuses from very early stage projects that have a lot of potential. The risk is that many of the seed round companies never make it all the way to ICO stage.

2. Private Sales

In the private sales stage the project usually has its basic materials such as the white paper, landing page and social communities established but there is yet very little visibility for the project. People participating in the private sale have to get tipped about the project from their networks since otherwise it is unlikely to find so early stage projects. Private sale can still provide good bonuses for early contributors but this stage still carries the big risk of the ICO marketing campaign not succeeding.

3. Pre ICOs or pre sales

In pre-ICO and pre sales stage the project usually has secured sufficient funding for a full size ICO marketing campaign rollout. The pre-ICO gives still the last chance for active industry experts and well networked people to invest into the project with discounted token price. The most endorsed projects usually get sold out at this stage already.

4. Upcoming ICOs & whitelists

If the project has not sold out during the pre ICO phase, there might be a time window form a couple of days to a couple of weeks when the project is usually allocating a lot of resources to roll out marketing campaigns and to show that their actual ICO phase is starting soon. Whitelisting (pre-subscribing into the ICO) is usually done to collect a newsletter list about the interested contributors to provide the community with relevant updates about the progress of the crowdsale.

5. Active (ongoing ICOs)

The actual ICO is the main crowd sale of the project tokens. Usually most of the tokens are left to be sold on this stage, since the marketing momentum has reached its climax and most of the potential investors have received information about the ongoing crowdsale. The investor confidence is at its highest level since the project has survived through the earlier stages and raised significant funding already, most of the time reaching over the soft cap at this stage already. The main sale of the ICO usually does not provide any discounts any more for the tokens, since the campaign is already in a more advanced stage and seems like a lower risk for the contributors.

6. After markets

After the ICO and the token generation event are finished each contributor should receive their share of the total token pool. The tokens are transferred or programmed by the project technical team to be allocated according to the contributions, KYC acceptance and wallet addresses collected during the previous stages. The ICO project management starts at latest at this stage to setup a favorable environment for the token after markets. This usually includes a lot of negotiations with different token exchanges that host platforms for the crypto currency and token peer-2-peer trading. Usually every finished ICO has to start from smaller exchanges to accumulate the required daily trading volume to be eligible to be listed in the more popular exchanges. Choosing the right exchange partners and having collaborative marketing efforts with them can gain a lot of traction to the trade of the tokens rising the demand, increasing the token market value and ultimately making the early contributors happy.

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The markets do not end there; when an ICO project has matured into the stage of being listed in the exchanges, the project has to start focusing on delivering its development milestones promised in the roadmap. The project has to focus on improving its product, gaining more users and utilizing any token value increase mechanisms at use to keep the project attractive for new users and investors. A project surviving through all of these steps as a winner is a rare success story which makes identifying the right projects in the early stage challenging and rewarding for the early investors.

What is the Active ICO List?

In our ongoing ICO list you can find all the invest in today. These ICOs are offered for a limited time only, so you have to hurry before the ICO period ends. You can see the ending date for the ICO listed for each ICO.

What is the pre ICO list?

Pre ICO token sale is somewhat a newer phenomenon in the cryptocurrency world. From the word itself, pre-ICO gives investors the ability to buy tokens before the official crowdsale begins. Usually, the pre-ICOs raises a much lesser amount of fund and it also offer tokens at a lower price with an essential bonus. The fund-raising target of the pre-ICO sale is often lower than to the main ICO.

Basically, pre-ICOs make use of separate smart contracts from the main ICO event. This is to avoid the mixture of pre-ICO funds with the main ICO funds to enable proper and easy account reconciliation and audit. Several projects are running Pre-ICOs to collect funds to finance the expenses incurred on launching the main ICO. Paid promo ads, strategic recruitment, and meet-up costs to awaken the interest of investors.

In launching pre-ICO token sale, transparency about the money raised and the number of tokens issued is the most important. A pre-ICO is a great investment opportunity for a quick buck, but it can still affect the project’s appeal and credibility when large amounts of tokens are at dips.

Our pre ICO section is probably one of our most exciting sections! And that’s because the pre ICO allows investors to buy tokens before the official crowdsale begins. It’s not all that uncommon to find a new pre ICO with a bonus of 40% or more.

What is the Upcoming ICO list?

In the upcoming ICO listing you will find all the quality upcoming coins that will be launching soon. The “Upcoming ICO” status means you will not be able to invest on their token sale yet, but that they are creating hype and a community for their pre sale and official token sale.

If the one or more of the upcoming cryptocurrency ICOs looks interesting to you, join their telegram group and whitelist in order to ensure you place in their ICO. By joining the whitelist you will be notified of the token sales (usually even before the general public).

What is Blockchain?

Blockchain is a protocol for managing a distributed ledger, meaning usually a cryptographically secured decentralized accounting system which operates through a network of computers in various locations. The network of computer confirm transactions in the system and cross refer the information to each other to keep a reliable, unforgeable and transparent records updated. The effort of providing calculation power to the maintenance of the network calculations is generally called “mining”. The blockchain systems usually reward the mining by generating or providing transaction tokens to the network supporting operators.

The blockchain protocols with cryptographic hash blocks, which contain relevant information about the previous transactions in the system.